At the beginning of the 20th century, Europe is living in peace and prosperity. The “Belle Époque” is an outgrowth of previous important historical events and developments. The networks that are created and which evolve funnel both people and their products, tangible and intangible. It is within this multi-layered world that sound recording and sound reproduction is invented. Early record labels send mobile crews literally all over the world to record local musicians. The range of the repertoire is endless. Cosmopolitanism in large urban centers favors polystylisms and polymorphisms. Colonialism, revolutions, conflicts, refugee flows; the theater, cinema, radio, photography, orchestras’ tours, but also circulations in all kinds of commercial channels in a world that evolves dynamically and anisotropically, form a complex network of “centers” and “peripheries” in alternating roles setting musical idioms in motion, both literally and figuratively. The networks in which the Greek-speaking musics participate, constantly conversing with their co-tenants, are magnificent. Discography has already provided important tools in understanding the relationships that developed between “national” repertoires. The result of this ongoing research is “Cosmopolitanism in Greek Historical Discography”.

Naturally, in the large urban centers of the Ottoman Empire around the Mediterranean Sea, the “conversations” of the Greek-speakers with their Turkish-speaking Muslim “co-tenants”, the Catholic Greek-speakers, the Armenians, the Sepharadi and Ashkenazi Jews, the Levantine Protestants, and the Europeans and the Americans, were more than intense. Very often, the scope of this network extends to the Balkans, to Eastern and even to a part of Central Europe. Especially regarding relations between Orthodox and Muslims, the relevant evidence demonstrates the musical exchanges between them and elucidate an ecumene where everyone contributed to the great musical “melting-pot”, and where everyone may draw from it, as well as redeposit it, in a new form, with a reformulated text and its meaning, with sometimes clear and sometimes blurred references to its pre-text, until someone else pulls it out again, through the “melting-pot”, so that it becomes clear that there is no end in this recreational and dynamic process where fluidity prevails. A case that comes from this type of repertoire is the song “To gelekaki”.

According to the data collected so far, the song was recorded nine times in Greek historical discography, a number that undoubtedly reflects its popularity:

– “To gelekaki”, Nitsa Moretti – Petros Kyriakos, Athens, 1932 (Columbia W.G. 383 – D.G. 236 and re-released by Columbia Turkey W.G. 383 – DT 42)
– “To gelekaki”, Dimitris Filippopoulos – Dimitris Efstratiou, Athens, 1932 (Columbia W.G. 384 – D.G. 237), this recording
– “To gelekaki”, Marika Nezer – Kostas Kontopoulos, Athens, 1932 (Parlophon 101256 – B.21643-I)
– “To gelekaki”, Marika Nezer – M. Zafeiridis, Athens, 1933 (Odeon Go 1801 – GA 1618 και GA 1638)
– “To gelekaki”, Artemis Manesi – Alkis Pagonis, Athens, 1933 (Odeon Go 1836 – GA 1617)
– “To gelekaki”, Tetos Dimitriadis – Christos Dimitrakopoulos, New York, February 22, 1933 (Orthophonic CS 75235-3 – S-627-A)
– “To gelekaki”, Kostas Dousas, Chicago, November 1934 (Columbia W 206627 – 56346-F)
– “To gelekaki”, Angeliki Karagianni – Giannis Degaitas, USA, 1947 (Liberty L 30A)
– “Gelekaki”, George Burlotos and The Georgettes, New York, September 29, 1953 (RCA Victor E3FB-1816 – 26-8331)

Between June and July 1948, Jack Mayesh recorded in New York the song “Mostrame gracioza” for Me-Re Records (Me-Re Record Co. 6003-B). It was actually the song “To gelekaki” with lyrics in Ladino, that is, in the Spanish-Hebrew dialect of the Sephardic Jews.

Jack Mayesh was born in 1899 in Kuşadası, in the Ottoman Empire. In 1920, he married Flora Salmoni, a resident of the island of Rhodes, born in 1903 in the city of Pordenore, in northeastern Italy. More information about both Mayesh and the Sephardic repertoire in general in historical discography can be found on Joel Bresler's extremely informative webpage www.sephardicmusic.org.

Syncretism, which is observed in the musical actualizations of the areas where Greeks lived and recorded, mainly in the area of folk-popular traditions, is monumental. It only takes one to listen to historical discography, which begins in New York, Smyrna (Izmir), Constantinople (Istanbul), Athens and Thessaloniki since 1900. An essential part of this syncretism concerns the Jews, who constitute one of the main conduits in the uniquely diverse cultural heritage of the Greek-speaking world. They borrow and lend, but they also carry more distant traditions from the places where they have previously lived and the places they have traveled to. They are the central interlocutors in the Greek and Ottoman ecumene, and compose a rich musical mosaic which consists of heterogeneous but co-existent palimpsests: a great musical melting-pot.

The sources show the timeless existence of a Jewish element, at least since the Hellenistic period, in areas that millennia later formed the modern Greek state. After the “Edict of Milan” in 313 AD and the gradual Christianization of the Eastern Empire, the Jewish element found itself in a difficult position. The Jewish populations that have since been established in these lands became known as Romaniote Jews (or “Romaniotes”’ Rome – Romios). Their historical geographical center of reference was the city of Ioannina, and they speak Greek with various linguistic mixtures. After 1492 and the “Alhambra Decree” by the joint Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella, those Jews who did not accept to embrace Christianity were expelled from the Iberian peninsula. They became known as the Sepharadi Jews (or “Sepharadim”), one of the largest Jewish ethno-cultural categorizations (Sepharad in Jewish texts is referred to as the region of present-day Spain). Thessaloniki was one of the main destination points of this displacement, as the ties with the city were older and already close. Apart from the role played by the Greek Jews in the musical developments on the Greek peninsula, there were also important mutual influences between the Greek-speaking Orthodox and the Jews in various other areas where the two communities lived together. As, for example, in Odessa, with the Eastern Ashkenazi Jews, who mainly speak Yiddish, a sui generis Semitic-Slavic language (in Jewish texts, the Kingdom of Ashkenaz, a descendant of Noah, is connected with north-eastern European territories). Their orchestral repertoire is often called klezmer. In other words, apart from the geographical limits of the modern Greek state, the cultural conversations between the Greek Orthodox and the Jews also concern other parts of the world, both in Europe and America, where they met as immigrants.

Research and text: Leonardos Kounadis and Nikos Ordoulidis